


The Story of Nelaros

by ThePaintedScorpionDoll



Series: Scenes from a War-Forged Courtship [17]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Aeron/Alistair, Angst, Drunkenness, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sad, Tabristair - Freeform, Warden Alistair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePaintedScorpionDoll/pseuds/ThePaintedScorpionDoll
Summary: Sometimes the conversation you don'twantto have is the conversation youneedto have.





	The Story of Nelaros

It is well past dark by the time Alistair finds Aeron sitting alone at the base of the large tree at the center of the Alienage. As he approaches, careful to avoid the candles and trinkets left by other visitors, he spots an open bottle of wine in the middle of her drawn-in legs. (It bothers him that he cannot tell how much of it is already gone.) Aeron stares straight ahead. Her fingers idly fiddle with the rings hanging from the chain around her neck.

Wedding rings, he knows now. Hers and…

“Somebody send you out to look for me?” Aeron drops her hand. She tilts her head to look up at him. “I could sense you coming from the gate.”

Alistair shakes his head. “When you didn’t catch up with us at the Gnawed Noble, I got worried. Your cousin—the, ah, the one who cooked for us? She…glared at me suspiciously, said she was not the sort to keep track of others _for_ others—”

“Of course—”

“—but your father… He suggested…” Alistair gestures to the tree. “So I came here.”

“He said that?” Aeron looks straight ahead again, appearing to murmur to herself before nodding a little. “Yeah. Yeah, he would…”

She shifts sideways a short distance and pats the newly-empty space next to her. After a moment of hesitation, Alistair settles down in the spot. He watches as Aeron picks up the bottle by the neck.

“I swiped this from Shianni’s stash of good wines before I left,” she explains, sounding only a little proud. “She’ll give me shit for it when she finally notices but—” She shrugs. “—I'll make it up to her.”

Aeron holds it out in offering. Alistair declines with a quick lift of his hand, watching with a troubled knot in his chest as she shrugs again and takes a pull straight from the open neck.

“How much have you had so far?” he asks.

She removes the bottle from her lips. “Not enough, I can assure you—” She glances at him. “—but that's not the question you're really here to ask, is it?”

The knot tightens, rising into Alistair’s throat. He looks down at his hands. “I-I don't—”

“Stop,” Aeron tells him firmly. “You’re not stupid, Alistair. Don't do that. Don't…play stupid. Not with me.”

When he finally dares to look at her again, the bottle is back on the ground. Her head rests against the bark of the large tree and her eyes are shut tight. She breathes in, as if bracing herself—

“What was his name?”

—and the question seems to knock all the wind out of her. Regret rushes in. Alistair starts to apologize, to assure her that she doesn't have to answer—

“Nelaros.” Aeron opens her eyes and lifts her head, but she does not look at him. “His name was Nelaros. He came from Highever and he was my husband for all of…a few hours. That’s all I really know.”

“And he helped to rescue you from…?” Alistair leaves the rest of the question unfinished. “Your—Soris made it sound like it was his…like Nelaros’s idea.”

Aeron nods. “Soris said as much to me, too.” She lifts the wine bottle by the neck. “Didn't change the outcome.”

The bottle is almost to her lips when she stops. Something like anger or even outright loathing quickly crosses her face.

“I didn't even have the decency to thank him before he died, Alistair. I just…” Aeron lowers the bottle, but her grip around its neck tightens. “All I did was ask him _why_. Why come? Why try to rescue us? Why do something _s-so…dangerous_ and—and…a-and _stupid_ for somebody you barely know? And he just… _fuck—_ ”

Aeron brings the bottle hard against her lips; some wine spills from the corner of her mouth, unnoticed by her. Alistair wonders, as he watches her drink, how much of this entire conversation she will remember tomorrow. He wonders, too, if it was even remotely fair of him to ask about this in the first place. One thing for her family to bring it up, to share what they know, but this… Isn’t this almost like taking advantage of her in some strange way—using her lowered defenses to get at whatever secrets she hasn't yet shared?

Alistair looks down at his hands. He swallows down another surge of regret. “We don't have to keep—”

“Don’t. _I am not_ that far gone.” Aeron puts the bottle down. He can feel her looking at him in the brief silence that follows. “Is that what you're worried about? That I'm too drunk to know what I'm saying or how to stop?”

Alistair wants to say yes.

He wants to ask her for the bottle; wants her to let him take her home to her family, or even back to Eamon’s estate, where he can convince her to get some sleep while he looks after her.

Alistair says none of those things. He just sits listening as Aeron shuffles in place beside him, murmuring and swearing to herself before gently taking his left arm by the wrist and slipping something small and metallic into the palm of his hand.

“There,” Aeron says, curling his fingers around the object. “You can have your hand back now.”

Alistair brings his hand close enough to see the object clearly. “A…” He wills himself to look at her. “Is this a copper?”

“I finally had one to give.” Aeron laughs as he tucks the coin away into a pocket, but the sound is nothing like he’s used to. It’s hollow, bitter. “I think it's almost empty.”

“What is?”

“The wine.” They listen as what remains sloshes around when she gently shakes the bottle. “Yeah. Almost empty. Might as well—”

Alistair holds out his arm, hand open. The glass is smooth, cool to the touch; the bottle feels weighty despite being mostly empty. The wine itself is…surprisingly sweet, without even a hint of the odd, stinging aftertaste that makes him steer clear of most labels. It's strong, though. There’s no doubting that. As Alistair puts the bottle down, he can already feel the smallest buzz at the edges of his brain.

And to think, Aeron drank most of this by herself…

“Do you want to know what he said to me?” Aeron’s voice is soft. “Y’know, after I asked him why he came to rescue us… Do you want to know what he said?”

Alistair looks at her. She is staring straight ahead again; head at a slight tilt, her eyelids half-lowered in recollection.

“Tell me,” he says gently.

“He said…” She takes a deep breath. “He said, ‘You’re my wife. What kind of man would I be if I…’

“And that was it. He was gone.” A bitter sound rises from the back of her throat. “He’d only met me—what, an hour, maybe two hours before our wedding? He didn't _know me_ , Alistair, from a _hole_ in the ground. He owed me _nothing_ , and yet he—”

Again, with that bitter, hollow laugh—

“H-he—”

It quickly shatters into tears. Aeron folds in on herself, drawing up her knees to hide her face. As he watches her shake with sobs, Alistair’s heart breaks under the weight of helplessness. This is her grief, one reason out of so many for the anger in her fight, and she has carried it alone for so long. What can he possibly do or say to make that burden easier for her?

“I'm not worth it.”

Alistair blinks. Why does she sound so…?

“What?”

“I’m not—this whole—” Aeron shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m just— I'm not worth—a-all…all _this_ —” She chokes back another sob. “I should be—”

 _“No.”_ Alistair surprises himself with the firmness in his own voice. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

“Alistair—?”

“Please. Aeron. Don’t. _It’s not true._ ” He looks at her, wanting very badly to at least brush the tears from her face. “It’s not true, Aeron. It won’t ever _be_ true. You are worth—a-and not just—not just to me, although yes— _Maker, yes—_ ”

Alistair stops himself, sighing. Maybe, just this once, the best thing he can do for either of them is say nothing at all. So he rises, feeling Aeron’s gaze follow him, and he offers her his hands.

“Will you let me walk you home, at least?” he asks her. “I won’t sleep at all, but as long as I know you’re somewhere safe—”

“No,” she answers swiftly.

“What?”

“No,” Aeron repeats, even as she slips her hands into his and starts to pull herself up. “Take me back with you.”

“Wait, are you—? H-hang on—wait—!”

Aeron stumbles into him, clinging tightly to anything she can find. A small prayer leaves Alistair’s lips when they land with his back against the tree instead of the ground, though he is certain to feel the pain of it tomorrow.

“I can’t stay here,” Aeron slurs under her breath. “Not tonight. Not by myself, don’t make me—”

“Aeron—”

“I can't stay here alone, Alistair. I ca…” Aeron’s grip on him tightens. She huddles even closer. “I can't stay here. Too many ghosts. Too many dead things—”

“I—”

“I’ll apologize to my family—Da, Shianni, they—they’ll understand, I know they will, and I’ll come back in the morning by myself, _I swear, just please—!_ ” Aeron’s eyes are wide, shining with terror and fresh tears. “Don’t leave me here alone tonight, Alistair, _please_ …” She chokes back a sob. “Please.”

“Aeron…”

“Please—please…”

As she starts to cry again, Alistair isn’t sure what to do. Aeron has never been like this before. Even in the wake of nightmares, even when she’s gotten drunk in the past, Aeron has _never_ looked this terrified or sounded so weak, so small—so… _broken_ , even.

It scares him.

_It’s a long walk back to the estate._

Oh, he knows. He certainly knows.

_She might even be safer here, with her father and her cousins looking after her. Who can know her better than family?_

But she has said as much herself, that she’s not the same woman who left; that there are things she’s seen and had to do that have changed her. What if she has nightmares about those things? Or about the Archdemon?

_Don’t be selfish, Alistair._

It’s nothing to do with being selfish!

Right?

Alistair does his best to shake the thoughts clear out of his mind. His own doubts can haunt him later.

“Can you walk?” Silence. Has she passed out against him? He shakes her a little. “Aeron. Are you—no, wait—don’t—”

A startled sound escapes her as he gathers Aeron into his arms, but she does not protest the gesture—seeming, instead, only to sink back or further into the depths provided by her stolen wine. But even from those depths, she clings to him; and her face, streaked with tears as it still is, looks only slightly more peaceful than before.

Alistair prays, as he starts the long walk out of the Alienage, that more peace finds Aeron with the light of the morning sun.


End file.
